Gerrymandering
Origin
The word gerrymandering comes from the name of Massachusetts Senator Elbridge Gerry. He first used gerrymandering in 1812. He redrew the districts of Massachusetts to win majority votes per district. The Boston Gazette noted that the section looked similar to a mythical salamander. A portmanteau of Gerry and salamander, gerrymandering refers to the process of manipulating district boundaries to give an advantage to a certain political group or candidate.
What is Gerrymandering?
Techniques
There are 4 primary techniques that politicians use when gerrymandering.
Cracking
Cracking is when a political group spreads voters of the opposition to prevent them from having a majority in any one district.
Packing
Packing is when a political group forces all oppositional voters into one district to prevent them from voting in any other district. This results in an overrepresentation of opposition voters in one district, but an underrepresentation in all others.
Hijacking
Hijacking forces two incumbents (politicians who already hold an office) to run against each other. This forces one of them to lose their seat, resulting in an opening for a new politician.
Kidnapping
Kidnapping moves an incumbent’s home address from one district to another. This forces the incumbent to run in a new district, or be faced with an unfair disadvantage in their previously held district.
Why Gerrymandering Works
Gerrymandering works because of the concept of “wasted votes.” Winning by one person has the same effect as winning by a thousand. Those 999 votes are wasted and could have been better applied in another district. What gerrymandering does is create as many wasted votes as possible. Therefore, in other districts, those parties are underrepresented, resulting in an advantage for the party who used gerrymandering. States like California particularly feel the adverse effects of gerrymandering.
Why Gerrymandering Isn’t “Wrong”
While gerrymandering has been shown to decrease some amount of electoral competition, many of the claims made about it are not true. Much of the decrease in competition since the turn of the millennium is believed to have actually been caused by partisan polarization and incumbency advantage. Also, some studies believe that gerrymandering actually increases competition rather than decreases it. That is because studies have shown that party leaders will actually spread their voters out, rather than packing them all in guaranteed districts. This will obviously increase competition.
As shown in the graph above North Carolina’s gap between Democrats and Republicans has shortened quite a bit since 2008, proving that the competition in said state has increased. What has also increased since 2008 is the amount of gerrymandering! Another fact to note here is that most of the seats in the Senate have been filled by the same lawmakers for an average of 6 years. This means that a driving factor behind what appeared to be a decrease in competition could have been incumbent advantage, not gerrymandering.
Conclusion
Gerrymandering is the use of techniques to increase or guarantee the chances of winning an election. Politicians redraw the borders of districts to move certain voters around. This means that they can control the amount of opposition voters in each district. These techniques work because of the concept of “wasted votes.” Party leaders pack as many wasted votes as possible into as few districts as possible. While this practice may appear to dampen electoral competition or use illegal techniques, it actually does neither. Gerrymandering actually increases competition, while also using completely legal practices. For example, in North Carolina, the most gerrymandered state in the US, electoral competition has been steadily increasing.
Resources
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/10/15211122/algorithm-end-partisan-gerrymandering
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_senators_expelled_or_censured
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Effect_on_electoral_competition
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